News - Chrome gaining ground on Firefox

[HEXUS]

Speedy development boosts Chrome’s growth while others relax.

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[Steve]

While I still like Firefox, particularly because of its decent dev tools, something that Chrome lacks, that very fact is why I use Chrome for general browsing.

I have a habit of leaving the dev tools turned on and they seem to slow Firefox down quite a lot, but as Chrome is not similarly encumbered, it means I now only use FF for testing.

[mikerr]

I've moved over to chrome for most stuff, due it its speed
but still keep firefox around for its usefulness and compatibility.

E.g. royal mail online postage won't work with chrome, and neither will paypal's version...

Firefox 4.0beta is much much faster than 3.6 though,

[Grey M@a]

Strange as paypal and the royal mail postage works on Chrome this end. I dropped FF a while back after it would crash every 30 seconds regardless of system. Over time it got worse and when it did work it was slow as hell. Even the beta's aren't nothing to shout about and are basically a carbon copy of Chrome currently.

[format]

Switched to Chrome a while ago, never looked back!

[cheesemp]

I still use firefox as I've never had an issue with it. Just can't seem to get use to chrome.

(Spam from falas14 reported)

[spoon_]

The only vote against FF would be truly awful memory management otherwise all good.

[latrosicarius]

I mostly use Chrome now. The thing that gets me is, people have been asking for Firefox speed improvements for YEARS so its not like this should be a surprise. Mozilla never delivered. Instead, they give "personalities", new GUIs, and minute JavaScript performance improvements... but the thing still takes a day and a half to open, and switching tabs can be sluggish. When light-weight Chrome comes along, nobody should be scratching their head as to why FF users are flocking to it.

[[GSV]Trig]

The main reason for that increase in users IMHO is because the browsers these days are bundled in with other software, the user doesnt read the bits onscreen and just clicks next next next ok finish and suddenly you have stuff on your machine and you dont know where it came from..

[usxhe190]

I mostly use Chrome now. The thing that gets me is, people have been asking for Firefox speed improvements for YEARS so its not like this should be a surprise. Mozilla never delivered. Instead, they give "personalities", new GUIs, and minute JavaScript performance improvements... but the thing still takes a day and a half to open, and switching tabs can be sluggish. When light-weight Chrome comes along, nobody should be scratching their head as to why FF users are flocking to it.

+1. I really like FF. But they haven't really delivered in terms of what we have always been screaming at them for. Speed. I think they tried to deliver on the memory management issues previously. Not sure if they have succeeded though.

Rather than Chrome, I usually use Opera.

[unreal]

Switched to Chrome a while ago, never looked back!

Same. Shown it to my old housemates and my family and they've all switched from Firefox to Chrome too. I prefer Chrome's minimal interface (esp on my puny 13" Macbook screen) and I love the Google Account integration stuff, with bookmarks, logins and all - I used to have to set up all these extentions and so with Firefox between my computers and bootcamp but now since it's all so streamlined it is perfect. Whether its on Windows or Mac, it's always so flippin fast too. Love the frequency of updates as well.

[Terbinator]

Chrome master race reporting in.

[Biscuit]

i tried chrome and i found it just gobbled up al my ram... way more than that of firefox. It seemed weird when so many others report it being so streamlined :/

[unreal]

Personally I don't find that myself, but in the days where everyone has 4gb+ of RAM I don't mind as long as there's no noticable slowdown on my system.

Plus I like an app that actually opens when I click it, lol.

[Mattus]

Until Google improves the Omnibar - a UI disaster - to the point where it's half as useful as the Firefox equivalent, I'll stick with Firefox. It'd also help if Chrome extensions weren't pathetically limited in scope, but I don't think that'll ever change.

Instead, they give "personalities", new GUIs, and minute JavaScript performance improvements... but the thing still takes a day and a half to open, and switching tabs can be sluggish. When light-weight Chrome comes along, nobody should be scratching their head as to why FF users are flocking to it.

Actually, 4.0 will be much faster than 3.6 at JS execution - faster than Safari and IE9, and only a tad behind Opera and Chrome in popular benchmarks like SunSpider. The new GUI is really necessary, as 3.6 looks really dated next to Chrome/Opera/IE9, all of which use glass and move the tabs to the titlebar. And contrary to popular belief, Firefox doesn't take long to open if you don't have many extensions. It's complex extensions which raise the startup time, and Mozilla can't be blamed for the extensions you choose to use and the sloppiness of their authors.

[Mithrandir]

Will have to look into the updated Chrome. Been using IE8 and trying out IE9 beta lately.